


Put Your Weapons Down

by igrab



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: I am here to do Science, M/M, OFC - Freeform, OMC - Freeform, Science
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-12
Updated: 2013-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 09:35:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrab/pseuds/igrab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Love comes back around again. Catch it. Hold onto it. Dig your fingers into its beating heart and make it belong to you. Welcome to Night Vale."</p>
<p>Carlos jabs his thumb on the off button. He doesn't want to hear about <i>love</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put Your Weapons Down

**Author's Note:**

> The current weather is [Carousel](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLQwnXa8uWA), by Vanessa Carlton.

 

_for all you broken-hearted lovers lost_   
_go find another one_   
_'cause you know time won't wait and you'll be late_   
_white rabbits on the run_

_it's hard to know what's good for you_   
_I know she let you down_   
_but the fever breaks when it's too much to take_   
_so you can put your weapons down_

•

He can feel the desert grit under his eyes and he rubs them, broad fingers fiddling with the radio dial as his car rolls on. There's nothing out here, just static and one channel that seems to be nothing but a constant wooden creaking. He leaves it on that one, because there's something soothing about it, and anyway it's better than the white noise. He tossed his iPod out the window two hours ago. Every fucking song reminded him of her; sitting in his truck bed watching stars, or kissing in the dim fluorescent lights out back of the Biology building. All songs were their songs.

_How far do I have to go before it stops hurting?_ He'd asked himself that before. You don't just spend five years in love with someone, you don't plan to _marry_ them for fuck's sake, and then -

No, he wanted to get away from all of that. From _her_. From everything he ever loved.

Carlos slams on the brakes, again, and digs his knuckles into his eyes. Something inside him is screaming, something hasn't stopped screaming since she'd cut him out of his life with a neat little incision, moved on, left him standing there with all the pain and the blood, and what the fuck? _What the fuck?_

He just has this big goddamn hole inside of him and he just. Wants. To understand.

The creaking wood noise shifts, and a warm voice pours over the radio, cutting through the darkness.

"Love comes back around again. Catch it. Hold onto it. Dig your fingers into its beating heart and make it belong to you. Welcome to Night Vale."

Carlos jabs his thumb on the off button. He doesn't want to hear about _love_.

•

Fifteen minutes later, he realizes he hasn't seen any signs along the highway for a very long time. Usually, there's the flat green signs with the numbers counting down to places Carlos has no desire to visit, not if there's humans there. But it's been a while since he's seen one of those, and he isn't quite sure if it worries him - more accurately, he feels nothing, but is slightly worried that he feels nothing.

He keeps driving.

The horizon wavers with the heat and the sun makes the sky look washed-out, all the color leeched away. He looks away for just a second - less than a second - and suddenly there's a sign, something big and... purple? He stomps on the brakes out of habit, because he hasn't seen anything other than brown and tan for miles upon miles and the sudden color is startling.

**Night Vale @ & mi.**

He blinks at the sign. And blinks again. The... numbers are sort of... wiggling, twisting in on themselves, and he's reasonably certain that he's going crazy, because he's seeing green as purple and he can't even numbers anymore. He keeps driving, but he's thinking maybe he should stop now, before the combination of heartache, anger, and sleep deprivation make things _really_ weird.

It can't be a full mile before he sees another sign. A billboard. It's also purple, and it has an eye on it, and it's advertising the Night Vale Community Radio... and just as he drives past it, he could swear that the eye blinked at him. Or possibly winked.

That he even considers this means he definitely needs to stop driving.

**Exit ∞B  
Night Vale**

Well. All right then.

He tips his head as he's driving by, because the 8 is laying on its side, but then the B is on its side instead and he can't quite figure it out. The sun is sliding down awfully fast, and a sleepy desert town is springing up as if it wasn't there a second ago, as if everything is only existing just as Carlos drives into it.

_Wow, tunnel vision,_ he thinks, eyes wide in the alarming onset of twilight. _I need sleep._

He doesn't even know where to stop. There doesn't seem to be a hotel or anything, and he doesn't see any people to ask, though something about the town seems to be heavy, thick with life, with something he can't put a name on.

_Or it's the sleep deprivation._ He isn't sure whether he's said that out loud or not. A lot of things seem kind of fuzzy. His car has stopped, and a moment later he acknowledges that it was his foot on the brakes that made it happen. How strange. There's no one out on the street, and heat wafts up from the black pavement and makes the houses wobble.

"Excuse me, sir?"

Oh goodness, there's someone at the window. The car window. And he's in a balaclava, which Carlos's addled brain vaguely registers as being 'not good', but his tone of voice is so _nice_. "Huh?"

"You look tired," the man says, very kindly. "If you haven't had the City-Council regulated twelve hours of sleep, you aren't safe to drive, you know."

What? Twelve hours? That's ridiculous. Well, he's had over twelve hours of sleep in his life... that has to count, right? But he isn't really doing words now. "Buh?"

"Please step out of the car, sir."

Oh, that sounds perfectly reasonable! He sort of... oozes out, and that becomes frighteningly literal when he finds he can't actually support himself on his own legs. So he leans against the car instead, stares up at the night sky (had it really gotten so dark so fast?) and reflects that the sky out here in the boonies is really _black_. Like... more than black. Deeper than black. Like a... void, stretching endlessly on...

He's asleep before he can even register that there didn't seem to be any stars.

•

When he wakes up he's in a room. A bedroom. His bedroom. Well, not _his_ bedroom in that he doesn't recognize anything inside it, but his in that it's the exact kind of bedroom that he would have wanted, as if someone had climbed into his head while he was asleep and gently extracted the idea of a perfect (but reasonably-priced) bedroom and made it happen, all in one night.

It's just plain weird, how comforted this makes him feel.

The heartache hits him in the chest before he can even move, but there's something strange about that, too. In this room that seems full to the brim of himself, there's very little that actually reminds him of _her_. In his old room, the one he left behind, there were a thousand broken pieces of a thousand moments, their memories so deeply entwined that he couldn't possibly pick out out and say _that was about me, right there, it was entirely my own_. But this room is his own. Or at least, that's what it feels like.

He pushes up and rubs the sand (both figurative and literal) from his eyes. The sun is bright, but it feels early enough in the day that the heat hasn't really built up strength yet. It falls over the lovely room - a knit rug on hardwood floors, he's always secretly wanted those - and Carlos stands up in that patch of sunlight and stretches, feeling his arms and legs pop with released tension and the stress of driving far too many miles on far too little sleep. He doesn't feel awake, not really, not yet, even if pain is wedged heavy in his chest. If he were really awake, he would be panicking, right? He _did_ just wake up in an unfamiliar room. But then, he can't really remember much of what happened to get him here. He must have been exhausted.

He wanders out of the bedroom and finds, to his surprise, that it isn't a motel suite or anything, but an actual apartment, with rooms and a small kitchen and a rabbit-eared TV set and a radio. These, too, all look perfect, like it they were all made for him, and _now_ he's starting to wake up, to get a little creeped out by everything. _Was I kidnapped?_ he thinks, then rolls his eyes at himself. But really, he can't think of any other reason how this could've happened. Or any reason at all. He'd never told anyone that he likes faux suede couches and knit blankets and retro appliances and handmade pottery mugs, and if it was one of those things, or two, it would've just been a coincidence. But it was all of the above, and everything more. Things he hadn't even _known_ that he liked, but now that he was looking at them, they felt so right that he wondered why he could ever have had anything else. Rounded edges on the kitchen counters. _Rounded edges_. He would never have thought of that, but he still has bruises from his kitchen back home, from leaning too hard - and other things.

That makes him wonder if he fiancée - _ex_ -fiancée - would have liked it. And he can't even begin to comprehend. He can't even see her here. There is nothing about this space that doesn't scream _Carlos, Carlos, Carlos_.

"I'm hallucinating. I have to be. This is a dream, and I'm still in my car on the highway and I probably have heatstroke."

Or he was dead and this was heaven, which would make a whole lot of sense, but if so, then why did his heart still hurt so goddamn much?

"Oh, good, you're awake," a voice says, and Carlos turns and _shrieks_.

There is a woman in his apartment and _she has no face_.

She has a head. Just no face. In fact, there's an empty hole where her face should be, and he can't quite see what's inside it.

"What the _fuck?!_ "

"Now, now, there's no need to get crass." That's another voice, and Carlos feels his head whip around hard enough to sprain.

There is a man hanging into his window. He has a face mask on, but presumably that means he _has a face_ , which was apparently a step up?

Carlos looks back at the faceless woman and she shrugs, drifting off to the kitchenette.

"What?!" His voice cracks on the word. He is definitely still asleep.

"Much better. I hope you like your place - Cheryl has a good feeling for things like this, but you know how it is - it's always better if you fill out the forms, but you sort of fell asleep all over me, and we had to make do."

What. What. Just, _what_.

"Where am I?" He only just barely manages to keep his voice from breaking again. Squeaking, though, that might have happened a little bit.

"Where _are_ you? You're the one who drove here, you should know these things. You're in Night Vale."

•

Carlos tries to drag the woman with no face down to his lab, which apparently he now has, but she says (somehow, without a goddamn mouth) that she can't leave the apartment. He goes down to the lab himself. Wow. Okay. A lab. Yes. This is a lab.

He'd left all his equipment back home - it all felt like _her_ , her with her Biochem and science jokes and ugh, they had once brewed their own alcohol and done shots out of test tubes and -

There aren't any test tubes.

What the hell, how can he not have any test tubes? Wait. There's a rack over there, but it's -

Purple. The test tubes in it are purple. The rack is purple. What the hell.

It hits him then, that he's in a strange town and maybe the purple signs were real, not just sleep deprivation, and his apparent roommate and interior decorator has _no face_ and he misses his fiancée, because she would've understood what the _fuck_ was going on in here and suddenly he's crying. Tears. So many of them.

_"I don't care, Carlos, I just don't care anymore. You don't care about me and I just don't believe you ever did."_

He hasn't really _cried_ , not yet. When she first left - he was so angry, so heartbroken, that he didn't even have room for sadness. But this place - this _stupid fucking place_ , he tells himself, wildly, with not a damn idea what the hell had happened in the past day - this place is unbelievable. This place is like nothing he's ever seen before.

There are lights, just outside his window.

He blinks through the tears and pushes himself to his feet with far less equilibrium than he would wish, and stumbles across the room. He yanks the window open and his hand is shaking when he reaches out, touches them, little glowing lights that curl around his broad fingers and separate like water droplets when he moves. He's fascinated, pure and simple, and all the worry falls away to a breathless feeling of wonder. What _is_ it?

He barely takes notice when the sun dips low in the sky, because his face has been pressed up to a state-of-the-art microscope, peering at the chemically impossible cells of the glowing lights.

There may or may not be a sigil on the microscope, drawn in smears of viscous red fluid.

•

It's past midnight, if his clock can be believed, when Carlos finishes up his notes on the floating, glowing substance that lingers outside his window. He has written the entire thing in crayon, because somehow there didn't seem to be any pens or pencils around, and he isn't entirely sure it makes sense scientifically but right now, he doesn't give a damn about accuracy. It feels good, to make observations, to look at things with a clean perspective and analyze them without putting it all in the context of a greater life. He isn't interested in freaking out about the strange circumstances of this magically appearing laboratory (again), he isn't interested in the Greater Scientific Community or the possible ramifications of glowing lights or people with no faces. He _is_ interested in how a person with no face can still make words without a mouth, and he intends to investigate this as soon as possible. Like tomorrow. Or something.

He's hungry, he realizes with a start of surprise, and he tugs on the lapels of his lab coat with a hint of trepidation. He's no cook and he doesn't know if anything in town is open at this hour, but maybe there's a gas station, somewhere that he can grab a coke and a powerbar. He finds keys on a hook by the door, right next to a helpful poster about lab safety, and locks the lab up behind him as he steps out into the deep plum-colored night.

To his surprise and delight, there's a pizza joint right next door, the flickering sign saying _Big Rico's_ and it feels threatening but Carlos can't pin down why, so he shrugs and goes right in. The place quiets. Everyone turns and _looks_ at him.

"Uh," he says. "A slice of sausage pizza, please?"

The person behind the counter (a large person of ambiguous... everything) nods, and Carlos shuffles awkwardly into one of the booths. The patrons are still staring. They don't look abnormal, not in the clinical sense, but Carlos can't help feeling like he's intruded upon something incredibly esoteric and unfriendly.

But suddenly, someone slides into the seat across from him in the booth. He's wearing what looks like a plastic replica native american headdress, and an incredibly bad one at that. He has garish red poster paint smeared under his eyes - Carlos can see it cracking as his skin moves. His very, very white skin.

Carlos dislikes him _instantly_.

"You must be Carlos," he says, and doesn't even blink when Carlos upsets the salt shaker and gapes at him.

"Excuse me?"

The man casually takes some salt and tosses it over his shoulder. There's a sound like a 'poof' and a croaking warble from the booth behind him. "Yes, yes, Carlos. The scientist. You are renting the lab next door, and your hair is..." he tips his head, frowning, like he's trying to puzzle something out. "... Well. _He_ thinks it's perfect."

He. Perfect. Voice. Hair. What?

"I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about," Carlos stammers, just as Big Rico (he presumes) drops a grease-soaked paper plate in front of him, the slice still bubbling with heat. "Erm. Is the sausage supposed to be purple?"

The man (or woman, or somewhere in between, Carlos can't determine) grunts and sneers. The offensive fake native across the table rolls his eyes.

"You had a press conference," he says, like Carlos is an idiot for not knowing this. "We heard about it on the radio."

"I did not!" Carlos insists, and tries the pizza anyway. It tastes nothing like sausage, but good, surprisingly good, and he scarfs it down.

"Oh. Maybe tomorrow then?" He reaches out and tries to steal one of Carlos's delicious little purple non-sausage bits. Carlos snatches the plate away.

"What about tomorrow?" He glowers at him.

"The press conference."

"What press conference?"

_Sigh_. "I know you're new here, but that's no excuse to be an idiot." And with that, the man stands up and walks out, leaving Carlos with a slightly fuller belly and way more questions than he ever anticipated having on a midnight pizza excursion.

He has no idea how much to pay for his pizza, so he leaves a $5 bill on the table, and doesn't look back when he hears a 'slorp' from behind him on his way out the door.

•

So he was on the radio, apparently, and apparently he had a press conference. How did that make any sense? He barges back into his lab, intent on looking for the faceless woman or the strange ninja person who'd spoken to him earlier. They, at least, had been polite, and reasonably inoffensive.

The lab is peacefully silent. So is the apartment. Carlos lets out a short breath and throws himself onto the couch, taking a vicious pleasure in the realization that it's actually a bit too lumpy, and therefore not perfect.

_He thinks it's perfect_.

A sputtered breath, and Carlos runs his fingers through his hair. This was all obviously some sort of code, because he didn't have hair that was anything but a slightly-greying mess and he didn't have a goddamn press conference!

His eyes slide over the room, and catch on a squat, old-fashioned radio plugged into the wall.

He sits up. Leans over the back of the couch. Stretches out his arm, and he can barely reach the dial so he yanks the entire table closer, because why the hell not? He turns on the radio, and static resolves into a beautiful, velvet voice.

"Now, dear listeners, I'm sure you've all come to the same conclusions I have - that these lights in the sky mean us no harm, but only exist to give us a reminder that life is brutally, cruelly short; that not all of us have a part to play, and that our little souls do no more than cast tiny shadows for brief moments, before we sink into the utter blackness of the steady stream of time."

Carlos's cheek is pillowed on his hands, folded along the back of the couch. He's heard the voice before, he thinks - when he was fiddling with the radio on the highway, just before making the turn to Night Vale. He remembers being angry, emotions raw like so much meat, and he's glad now that he can listen to the voice and put that behind him. He feels safe, warm, cocooned in a soft shell of words and the knowledge that despite all evidence, he is not, in fact, alone.

He slides gently into sleep there, and when he wakes up, he's full of the desire to hold a press conference.

•

Apparently that's what one _does_ in Night Vale, if the sudden and loud declarations of the Mayor are anything to go by. Carlos waits for her to finish... whatever it is she's saying, which he isn't really paying attention to, and then he thanks her and steps up to the podium, which seems to have been made with cardboard and packing tape. After briefly checking the structural support, he takes a deep breath and lets it out.

"As most of you know, my name is Carlos. I have no idea how this information became public knowledge, since I only got here yesterday, and I didn't speak to anyone until after dark."

"Oh, that was Cecil," someone pipes up - a little old woman at the front of the crowd, her face puckered like an apple into a perfectly curved smile.

"Um," Carlos says, and "uh."

"I'm Josie, by the way," she continues, like having conversations is perfectly normal in a press conference.

"Um, Carlos," he says, automatically. "But I guess you knew that."

"Yes, Cecil _does_ tend to get ahead of himself sometimes. Don't mind him. He got it all wrong, anyway - my corn muffins are _perfect_ ," she insists, just as someone in the back is saying, " _Who makes corn muffins without using any salt?_ "

Carlos takes a deep breath and thinks about the glowing lights. _Just go with it_. Take every second empirically, don't try and fit it into the bigger picture. "Okay," he says. "So uh. Does anyone know why I was - am - holding a press conference?"

A buxom young woman with frizzy red hair and knit fingerless gloves rolls her eyes. "You're the one who called it," she points out.

Carlos doesn't get it. He just plain doesn't. It doesn't make _sense_. "Um," he says, and scratches the back of his head, ruffling up the hair there. Shit, he needed a haircut. How long had it been?

_Since you were broken up with, asswad,_ his brain kindly informs him, making his heart lurch unpleasantly at the thought. _You've really let yourself go._

"Science," he says, because that's a good word, right? When in doubt, fall back to what you know. And besides, he thinks, you already have a lab and everything. And don't you want to take a closer look at the faceless woman? And the purple pizza lumps? "... I'm here to do science. This town is... probably the most scientifically interesting town in the US."

That isn't even a lie. It just feels like one, because his reasons for coming here were the opposite of scientific and he _hates_ feeling like this, feeling... emotional. _I'm actually here because my fiancée dumped me_ , he thinks, trying it out in his head, but before he can say it, he meets someone's eyes at the back of the quad, the same person who had been complaining about the corn muffins.

Purple eyes, strikingly purple, behind thick-rimmed glasses. Nice eyes. Eyes that weren't judging, or rolling, but perfectly supportive and full of admiration. Eyes above a smile that, Carlos couldn't help but notice, were lovely.

"... I'm going to study just _what_ is going on here," he says instead, and grins, looking right into that person's eyes as he does so - and it's the first time he's smiled in ages, _really_ smiled, with his whole face and not just the lips parting to reveal the teeth. It hurts, smiling, but it's a good hurt, a healing kind. He doesn't want to wallow, he discovers. He _wants_ to be able to smile.

He wraps up the press conference by putting out an open call for lab assistants, and his eyes never leave the delighted face of the man at the back of the crowd.

•

"I dare you to go knock on the door."

Carlos pins his new associate with a frustrated glare. She pops her gum and smiles wickedly at him. Joanna Nightingale is not what he expected when he asked for lab assistants, but she's there anyway, claiming to be 'the closest thing Night Vale has to an expert', then declined to specify what she was an expert _of_. So far, she'd just followed him around with her big black camera, taking pictures of random things (and Carlos had a deep suspicion that many of these things were the back of his head), and a certain nonchalance about stuff that Carlos would usually consider _verifiably impossible_.

"Oh, that's nothing to worry about," she said, upon hearing Carlos exclaim in astonishment as a pedestrian floated up in the sky with beams of light streaming from her eyes, then came gently back down on the other side of the road. "Don't bother," when Carlos accidentally ran over what seemed to be a man in a hard hat making slithering motions on the ground. "It's just the Secret Police," when multiple men in balaclavas stopped the car and demanded to see their paperwork.

Carlos had a driver's license, and Joanna had a copper disc shaped like a pentagram with incomprehensible figures burned into it. The policeman looked them both over, gave them back, and told them to 'Have a nice day'.

"He sounded like he meant it," Carlos said, as he started driving again.

Joanna tuned the radio from static to the sound of a gurgling brook. "Of course. He _did_ mean it."

They're standing out back of the elementary school, looking down at a housing development called Desert Creek. Joanna has a pair of flat, round goggles over her eyes and a bandana over her dreads, and Carlos is coughing dust into his lab coat. It may have looked fairly clear from inside the car, but the swirling breezes kick up an awful lot of sand and grit.

"No way."

"Five bucks," Joanna says, and snaps another picture. They both lean in to look at the tiny digital screen - nope. No house. They look up. House.

Joanna hits a speed dial on her cell phone, while Carlos continues to peer at the unsettling discrepancy. It would help, he thinks, if he wasn't continually having to rub sand out of his eyes.

"Cecil, it's Joanna. Did you know there's a house that doesn't exist?" She pauses, while Carlos coughs, feeling suddenly like he's swallowed a mouthful of dirt. "It _seems_ like it exists, like it's just right there when you look at it! And it's between two other identical houses, so it would make more sense for it to be there than not." Another pause, and she pops her gum. "Yeah, he's right here. Uh huh. Sure. You know I don't like my name on the radio." She covers the mouthpiece and asks him something, but Carlos doubles up coughing before he can make any sense of it. "Uh huh. I dared him, but he's too chickenshit to try it."

Carlos sputters and tries to grab the phone. "I am _not_ ," he insists, fighting against his own awkwardness and trying not to do anything inappropriate, but _will you just give me the damn phone_. "Why don't _you_ do it, then?"

"Hell no, I ain't knockin' on no nonexistent door," says Joanna, and Carlos thinks he can hear a faint voice from the other side of the phone.

" _Is that him? Was that him?? Oh my god, Joanna!! I'm hanging up now!_ " And apparently he does, for the connection cuts out and Jo flips the phone shut.

"What was that all about," Carlos grumbles.

"Oh, I think he's just too nervous to actually talk to you," she says. "Pretty sure he wouldn't be able to string words together, let alone sentences."

That wasn't what he meant at all, actually, but Carlos gives up and tries to brush the dust from his lab coat. All he succeeds in doing is smearing it further, streaks of rust red on the once-pristine white.

"You should probably stock up on those," Joanna says, and her gum makes a satisfying _crack_.

•

That night, he turns on the radio.

"...Listeners, I have to apologize. You all know how temporally displaced phone calls can get, and sometimes entire experiences! Well, I was in such a tizzy over the absolute _perfection_ of our newest Night Vale resident, that I entirely forgot about linear time! This has understandably caused some confusion, as I ended up reporting everything about Carlos and his scientists in one broadcast, rather than spread across several days. Listeners, I am _so_ embarrassed. This hasn't happened to me in a long time, and I can promise you that it won't happen again.

"As for the correct timeline of events, Carlos arrived in Night Vale _three_ days ago, just after sunset. He was somewhat unwell when he arrived - a fact that has only just now been brought to my attention, which is _extremely_ inconsiderate, by the way - and was signed up for a residence and workplace unit by a very understanding and helpful member of the Sheriff's Secret Police. The next day he did not, in fact, hold a press conference as previously reported - that press conference was held today, in the town square, and I can say now that I had the great fortune of being able to attend. You see, listeners, I do usually get a great deal of my information second-hand, as it were, but after the report of the night before I knew I _must_ be there in person. And it was _exquisite!_

"Anyhow, I won't burden you all rehashing the details. The nonexistent house was investigated later today, and as for the seismic shifts, well, that hasn't happened yet. If you know what I'm talking about, please stop in for a quick re-education on your way in to work tomorrow. If you don't, perfect! You are right on schedule to find out when everyone else does, at the _proper_ time."

Carlos was slightly dumbstruck, staring at the radio with his mouth hanging open. For one, there was the whole... linear time thing, or lack of it, and while that was admittedly weird and scientifically unlikely, that wasn't what had caught his attention.

.... _Perfection_?

Carlos gets a feeling in the pit of his stomach, a strange, sort of twisting feeling. For one, he isn't perfect. Not by a long shot. He couldn't even get engaged without cocking it all up, let alone draw up any reasonable scientific conclusions in a town that, clearly, is all on drugs. All of it. The entire town. Not just the people, no. _The town itself is insane_.

For two, Cecil's voice is decidedly male, and Carlos has no idea what to make of that.

He would be the first to say that there's nothing wrong with being gay, that he knew gay people and he wasn't the kind of guy who was uncomfortable with the concept. It's just, the gay guys he had known had certainly never been interested, not _really_ , and he'd never had a guy or even really a girl be fascinated with his _looks_. He's always been the guy who isn't much to look at, but has a good personality somewhere under there. Presumably. Though speaking from his current state, he figures his personality probably sucks too.

All this adds up to purple, basically. That's the only possible way he can describe the utter confusion this town brings out in him. _One plus two equals purple. Fuck it, I need a drink._

•

"We've got a station up by Route 800," Joanna says. She's not wearing a shirt, and Carlos has no idea what to say to that. It's not like he's never seen... breasts, but _really_. No one else seems to have a problem with it, so he just... keeps his face turned away.

"A what? And why are you always saying 'we'?" Wow, the crack on the ceiling is _very_ interesting, isn't it?

"Me and Jack," she says, shrugging. "You haven't met him yet. Anyway, we've got a monitoring station, with seismographs. Jack bought it, I don't know if he ever told me why - but whatever, seismographs, right?"

"Uh," Carlos says, which seems to be his default method of communication these days. But actually, seismographs do seem pretty nice. "Is there any possibility of seismic activity?"

Joanna gives him an arch look that he can't help seeing, though he is _not_ , repeat, _not_ looking at her chest. "Anything is possible," she says, and he's pretty sure that's not actually true, but he heads out to the monitoring station anyway.

When she's unlocking the door, though, something changes. She spits out her gum in the sand and turns back to him with a wide grin. "Hey," she says, and her voice is lower, more sultry. "You're Carlos, right? I'm Jack. And _damn_ , Cecil was spot-on about those teeth."

Carlos reflects that his capacity to process impossible things is getting tapped out more and more frequently the more time he spends in Night Vale. He can only take so much, and apparently, shirtlessness _and_ multiple personalities are more than he can deal with. He doesn't question it. "What about my teeth?"

"You didn't listen? He thinks they're _perfect_ ," Jack says with an almost mocking tone. "And he's right, but I'm still not sold on the hair."

"I don't _do_ anything to my hair," Carlos mutters, and he had braces when he was like... twelve, but since then, he hasn't thought about his teeth in any great detail either.

"Yeah," Jack says. "That's probably why he loves it. Hey, should that thingy be doing that?"

Clearly, Joanna is the scientist of the two of them. Carlos doesn't even debate the relative ludicrousness of that thought, just checks the seismograph, and promptly drops his clipboard.

Jack scoops it up and hands it back to him, chuckling at the crayon taped to a piece of yarn dangling from the clip. "I'm taking that as a 'no'."

Carlos shakes his head. "This has got to be a mistake." He checks the equipment and finds, to his surprise, that it's all in perfect functioning order. There is absolutely no reason why the seismographs should be charting such violent amounts of activity.

"Are we gonna die?" Jack's tucked the crayon behind his ear and follows Carlos around, posing like a lab assistant from a bad porno. For some reason, Carlos has no trouble looking at his chest, even if it hasn't physically changed in the slightest.

"That depends," Carlos says, and checks everything for a second time. And a third. "... This is fucking ridiculous," he mutters, and Jack whistles.

"Anyone ever told you you're sexy when you curse?"

Carlos sighs. "I like your other half better," he mutters, under his breath.

"Yeah, me too," Jack says, flashes him another grin, and draws something lewd on the clipboard. Carlos snatches it away.

"There's a distinct possibility that we're all experiencing catastrophic earthquakes right now," he growls.

Jack gives him a look like _that's crazy_ , which is exactly not what he expected at this juncture, making him throw up his hands in frustration.

"But we can't feel them, so fuck it, I guess?"

"You could submit an insurance claim anyway," Jack points out with a toothy grin.

"Tell it to someone to cares," Carlos growls.

•

That night, the radio-voice tells Night Vale exactly that, and Carlos feels an odd surge of... jealousy? It's the second time now that his partner has been the one to report to the radio, which is fast becoming an integral part of Carlos's life. He squirms on the couch and listens, with the knit blankets wrapped around his toes, and tries not to ruminate on how much of what the radio says is actually _true_. So far the bits about him have been true, sort of. They've been at least in line with the spirit of the truth, anyway, but the truth has been flighty and inconsistent. Carlos knows he should feel despondent. When he left Sacramento, the most he'd hoped for was 'doing decent work in a numb daze somewhere with AC', and so far exactly none of that has happened. There's no AC in his lab, his thoughts and emotions are exceptionally sharp, and the work he's doing can't really be described in any word he knows.

_Fun_ , he thinks, and that shouldn't be a thing but it is. _Exciting_ comes to mind as well. _Fulfilling_ , because the deep part of him that always marveled at life's greater mysteries is being constantly overworked, and actually? He loves it. It's the opposite of decent, it's _thrilling_ , and he's beginning to slowly accept that reality is in a constant state of flux. It doesn't discourage him. He just feels the gentle smoldering of a _challenge_.

With that in mind, he sets out the next day for the Night Vale Community Radio Station. He gets lost several times, but a Secret Policeman (and he thinks it's the same one who rescued him, actually) points him on the right path. He stands in the parking lot for a minute, wiping his sweaty palms on the cleanest of his lab coats, and tries to figure out why he's so nervous.

It's just, he's heard several times now that the Voice of Night Vale has... a high opinion of him, in a manner of speaking, and Carlos has never met anyone like that before. Plus, he's been listening to his voice, every night. Most nights he lets it lull him, lets those pretty words make him... _feel_ , and that's a private thing. He doesn't know how he could deal with it, hearing them in person. He has maybe built Cecil up in his head, and he's afraid that reality will shatter his expectations.

But this is Night Vale. Reality isn't a guarantee, and expectations are never a good idea. So he runs his fingers through his hair, bats down a feeling of self-consciousness about it, and lets himself into the Station.

It looks like a small doctor's office, much cleaner than the typical image of a radio station, but instead of electronics and cigarette smoke it smells like coffee, cinnamon, and a tickling hint of black licorice. Already pleasantly surprised, Carlos pulls out his pocket EMF detector and begins taking readings - up until a nervous young woman with a crisp new NVCR Intern badge comes up to him.

"Um, sir?" she says, twisting her hands together. "What are you-"

"Science," he says, trying his best for a menacing look, though he suspects he only looks 'mildly perturbed'. "I'm doing science. Where can I find Cecil Baldwin?"

The intern leads him around the corner, and he can hear Cecil's voice before he sees him - just as lovely and deep as it is over the radio, and something in his chest clenches. The room beyond is framed in a warm dimness, with a bright halo of light surrounding the recording booth, and there he is, leaning forward in his chair and talking expansively with his hands, even if no one can see them. There are tattoos peeking out from the rolled-up cuffs; Carlos can't quite tell yet but he thinks he sees nail polish, as well. Cecil's hair is poking out just above his ears, fighting with the arms of his glasses for space. Carlos swallows. He feels incredibly self-conscious, and he brushes off the hovering intern and focuses on his EMF detector so he doesn't have to look, to see.

"And now, a word from our sponsors."

Out of the corner of his eye, Carlos sees the man behind the microphone flip a switch, and he pulls off his headphones. Immediately, Carlos can feel the weight of the other man's surprised gaze, and it makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up - not a bad feeling, necessarily. The EMF detector makes a strange noise and he frowns at it.

"... Carlos?"

Cecil's voice cracks a bit on the word. Carlos looks up quickly, meets his eyes - and yes, it's just as he feared (or perhaps hoped), the violet eyes at the back of the press conference were indeed Cecil's. They look astonished, pleased, and a little bit nervous, and it makes a flush rise in Carlos's cheeks, somewhere under his tan skin.

"Uh, yeah, that's me," he mutters, embarrassed.

"W-what are you doing here?"

Unlike the intern, Cecil Baldwin doesn't seem to be saying it with an undertone of _get out you don't belong here_. He seems... genuinely interested, perhaps a little too interested, and Carlos almost drops his detector because no one's ever looked at him like that. Like they can't quite believe he's real. "I, um," he stutters, and he has to look away from those adoring eyes. "I'm testing the station. For, materials." His face is going red, he can _feel_ it. Materials. What even? He just can't seem to admit that he came to the NVCR Station to talk to Cecil.

"Oh!" Cecil says, looking completely thrilled by this explanation. "How wonderful!"

_Shit_ , he thinks. _I need to get out of here. Now._ "Uh," he says, looking back down at the EMF detector. "Gosh, these are some... weird readings. I - " But when he actually moves it closer, the device starts beeping, and he's absolutely certain the readings aren't supposed to do _that_.

"What's that mean?" Cecil says, bouncing up in his seat a little.

"Nothing," Carlos says, quickly, but his efforts to tuck it away only seem to make the piece of equipment angry. He finally brings it back out and follows the chirping - it leads him right to the microphone, and the chorus of strange noises and buzzing and overexcited jagged lines only make Carlos feel like his head's going to explode. This isn't just electromagnetic forces, this is... like... bacon wrapped bacon. Carlos is so done with analogies.

Also, Cecil has very _purple_ eyes and Carlos has been looking at them instead of the readout, which doesn't exactly help matters.

"I should, go," he mumbles, fumbling with the detector and almost dropping it before he manages to find the pocket of his lab coat.

"Why? Is something wrong?" Cecil looks genuinely distressed and it makes Carlos all the more panicked.

"Um, yes," he says. "In fact, you should probably evacuate the building. Just to be safe."

He races out of there before Cecil can respond. _You are, without a doubt, the Worst Scientist Ever_ , he tells himself, and doesn't even notice the crumpled heap in the hallway that was once the unfriendly intern.

•

That night, Cecil talks about him. It sounds pre-recorded, so maybe it was part of that earlier broadcast that was supposedly made days ago, but Carlos isn't going to believe _that_ without some hard evidence. Either way, what Cecil ends up saying makes him squirm in his seat.

"Carlos, perfect and beautiful, came into our studios during the break earlier, but declined to stay for an interview. He had some sort of blinking box in his hand, covered with wires and tubes. He said he was testing the place for materials. I don't know what materials he meant, but that box sure whistled and beeped a lot. When he put it close to the microphone, it sounded like, well, like a bunch of baby birds had just woken up. Really went crazy. Carlos looked nervous. I've never seen that kind of look on someone with that strong of a jaw. He left in a hurry. Told us to evacuate the building, but then-- who would be here to talk sweetly to all of you out there?"

He rubs his jaw, feeling, if possible, even _more_ self-conscious now. 'Strong jaw' was one way of putting it; he'd always thought his face was far too heavy and square to be appealing. It was all covered in shaggy scruff, too - he hadn't shaved since the breakup either. He really did need a haircut.

"Settling in to be another clear night and pretty evening here in Night Vale. I hope all of you out there have someone to sleep through it with. Or at least good memories of when you did."

Carlos wishes he did. He honestly wishes he could think back to any moment in the past five years and not have it hurt, not have the memories feel tainted and stained by the knowledge that it was all going to end, messy and painful and unresolved in any way. It's strange, how one moment can change everything, how it can turn years of love and trust into a barren wasteland of pain and lies. How it can make a man feel like nothing he will ever do will be good enough, he will never be happy, he will never be at peace, because something perfect has been broken. Nothing can change that. Nothing can re-write what was happened.

He wraps his knit blanket around his shoulders and sleeps, fitfully, on the slightly-lumpy couch. When it comes down to it, he feels lonely in the pit of his soul, lonely because he has no one, and because he will never be able to lose the feeling that everything good can so easily come to an end.

•


End file.
